Holidays

Holidays and entertaining go hand in hand. Over the next few months, there is a good chance you’ll be invited to someone’s house to celebrate. Most likely they will serve food. Lucky you… it means that you will be a dinner guest!
I’ve thrown many dinner parties myself, been a guest at dozens more, and participated in a slew of pot-luck dinners. Here are my top 10.5 DOs and DON’Ts for dinner guests. They fall in the realm of common sense but they are definitely worth repeating.Continue reading →

New year, new you!! Ah… if it was only that easy. New year resolutions are a common way to set an intention and work toward it….at least for a while. My friend John recently posted “I’m opening a gym called ‘Resolutions.’ It will have exercise equipment in it for the first two weeks and then it turns into a bar for the rest of the year.” It is funny because it rings true. Statistics vary but most show that a very small percent actually fully achieve their goals and many quit trying within a month or two. I have often been among this group.Continue reading →

This is a step-parenting horror story that became one of our family’s favorite anecdotes. I remember it as our Thanksgiving Meals-on-Wheels. My boyfriend/future husband and I had been dating for over a year and had spent much of that time doing group things with some combination of our children…his 5 and my 2. This “memorable” Thanksgiving was the first holiday in which we both had our kids with us, all 7 of them in an age range from 7 to 17. We were thrilled to spend it together as a blended family and didn’t foresee the problems ahead.